Australian electoral systems

Research Paper no. 5 2007–08

Australian electoral systems

The Australian electorate has experienced three types of voting
system First Past the Post, Preferential Voting and Proportional
Representation (Single Transferable Vote).

First Past the Post was used for the first Australian
parliamentary elections held in 1843 for the New South Wales
Legislative Council and for most colonial elections during the
second half of the nineteenth century. Since then there have been
alterations to the various electoral systems in use around the
country. These alterations have been motivated by three factors: a
desire to find the perfect system, to gain political advantage, or
by the need to deal with faulty electoral system arrangements.

Today, two variants of Preferential Voting and two variants of
Proportional Representation are used for all Australian
parliamentary elections. This paper has two primary concerns:
firstly, explaining in detail the way each operates, the nature of
the ballot paper and how the votes are counted; and secondly, the
political consequences of the use of each system. Appendix 1 gives
examples of other Australian models used over the years and
Appendix 2 lists those currently in use in Commonwealth elections
as well as in the states and territories.

Under Full Preferential Voting each candidate
must be given a preference by the voter. This system favours the
major parties; can sometimes award an election to the party that
wins fewer votes than its major opponent; usually awards the party
with the largest number of votes a disproportionate number of
seats; and occasionally gives benefits to the parties that
manufacture a three-cornered contest in a particular seat.

With Optional Preferential Voting the voter
may allocate preferences to as few as one candidate. This system
can produce similar outcomes to full Preferential Voting, but can
also produce results where the winning candidate wins with less
than half of the votes. It also clearly lessens the importance of
preferences in many seats.

The Proportional Representation system used in
Senate elections increases the chances of minor parties and
independents winning seats, produces closer results in the struggle
between the major parties, and makes it difficult for a major party
to gain control of the Senate.

The Hare-Clark system ensures that no seat is
safe, creates an electoral system where party members fight each
other as much as their external opponents, and operates in such a
way that minority governments are more common than when
Preferential Voting is used.

Despite parliamentary enquiries after each Commonwealth
election, there is generally little call for major changes to be
made to Australian electoral systems. On balance it seems that
Australia has found arrangements that suit the needs of its people,
its parties and its parliamentarians.

Australian parliamentary elections have been
notable for the extent of electoral system experimentation and
change over the years. Some of this change has been aimed at
providing the best possible voting system; on the other hand, some
of the change has been made with the aim of achieving particular
political outcomes.

The Australian experience has focussed on three types of voting
system:

Plurality systems are the simplest of systems, where
the winner is the candidate with a plurality of votes, though not
necessarily an absolute majority of votes. Such systems include
First Past the Post and the Block Vote, both of which have been
used in Australia.

Majority systems attempt to ensure that a candidate
secures an absolute majority of votes. The Second Ballot and the
Contingent Vote are examples that have been used in Australia. The
best-known and most widely used in this country has been
Preferential Voting (known in the UK as the Alternative Vote, and
in the USA as Instant Runoff Voting) which is discussed at some
length in this paper.

Proportional Representation systems (PR) are designed
to allocate parliamentary seats to parties in proportion to their
vote. The example in use in Australia is the Single Transferable
Vote.

This paper refers to the main variants of Preferential Voting
and the Single Transferable Vote that are used today, outlining the
way each operates, and discussing briefly the political
consequences of their use. Appendix 1 gives examples of some of the
Australian systems used over the years. Appendix 2 lists the
electoral systems currently in use in Australia.

The first Australian parliamentary elections were held in 1843
for the New South Wales Legislative Council, a body whose members
had previously all been appointed. The Legislative Council had been
enlarged, with 24 of its 36 members to be elected.[1]The electoral
system used was First Past the Post, with the candidates who gained
the highest number of votes being elected. The voting in different
electorates was held over a few days, with the first being held in
the electorate of Sydney the first parliamentary election
held in Australia (Election Result 1).

In 1851 the first elections were held in Victoria, South
Australia and Tasmania, also for Legislative Councils. Western
Australia first held elections for 12 of 18 Legislative Councillors
in 1870.

By 1860 the achievement of what became known as responsible
government had seen elections put in place for lower houses of
parliament in New South Wales (1856), Victoria (1856), South
Australia (1856), Tasmania (1856) and Queensland (1860). Lower
house elections were not held in Western Australia until 1890.

The pre 1856 elections were all conducted by a show of hands,
with the candidate with the highest vote winning the contest a
First Past the Post electoral system. The first use of the secret
ballot (soon known internationally as the Australian ballot )
occurred in Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania in 1856,
followed soon after by New South Wales in 1858 and Queensland in
1860. It was first used in Western Australia in 1879. Although the
first electoral system used in all colonies was First Past the
Post, none of the states now use this system for each eventually
moved to replace it with some other system. The territories never
used it.

There have been three basic motivations for making electoral
system changes: idealism, the seeking of political advantage, and
the need to deal with faulty electoral system arrangements.

From an early date there were some Australians concerned to
explore the possibility that a better system than First Past the
Post might be devised. Prominent in this were Catherine Helen
Spence of South Australia, and the Tasmanian lawyer and politician,
Andrew Inglis Clark. Both were impressed by Proportional
Representation, devised in Britain by Thomas Hare in the
mid-nineteenth century. Spence called Proportional Representation
effective voting , seeing it as guaranteeing that all important
minority voices could gain representation in a national or regional
legislature.[2]Clark pushed for the use of
Proportional Representation in Tasmania, and the Hare invention was
used in the Hobart and Launceston electorates in the 1897 and 1900
elections[3]After reverting briefly to First
Past the Post, in 1907 the Tasmanian Parliament introduced what
became known as the Hare-Clark system (South Australians called it
Hare-Spence ), and it has been used ever since (for Hare-Clark, see
pp. 20 5). Spence and Clark s work has been the major instance of
idealism prevailing in the introduction of an electoral system in
Australia.

The more usual motivation for electoral system change has been
political calculation which could be motivated by a desire to
protect or boost one s own position, or to inflict damage upon one
s opponents.[4]Such was the conservative parties
main reason for introducing Preferential Voting prior to the 1919
Commonwealth election, and ALP governments sponsoring Optional
Preferential Voting in New South Wales and Queensland.[5]

Some electoral changes have been made because of problems with
existing systems, something that has occurred twice in relation to
Senate elections. The Block Vote used in Senate elections from 1903
to 1919, and Preferential Voting used from 1919 and until 1949,
both awarded a disproportionate number of seats to the party that
gained a majority of a state s vote. Both were replaced in an
effort to eradicate this problem.

For the current systems in use in Australia, see Appendix 2.
These show that four systems are currently in use in Australia. Two
are variants of Preferential Voting and two are variants of the
Single Transferable Vote example of Proportional Representation,
all of which are discussed in the pages that follow.

Preferential Voting, the voting system known in the United
Kingdom as the Alternative Vote and in the USA as Instant Run-off
Voting , is widely used for Australian lower house elections. With
Fiji and Papua New Guinea (the latter from 2007), Australia is one
of only three nations to use this system for national elections.
Some Australian elections use full Preferential Voting, some use
optional Preferential Voting.

If a candidate receives more than 50 per cent of the number 1
votes (the first preferences ), that candidate is declared elected.
This occurred in the Commonwealth electorate of Bradfield (NSW) in
2004 (Election Result 2).

Election Result 2:
Bradfield (House of Representatives) 2004[One to be elected]

However, in many cases no candidate receives more than 50 per
cent of first preferences. In 2004, 61 House of Representatives
electorates (40.7 per cent) were not decided on the first count. If
this occurs in an electorate the following procedure is
followed:

the candidate with fewest votes is excluded from the count

this candidate s votes are transferred to other candidates
according to the second preferences shown on the excluded candidate
s papers and

if this still does not produce a candidate with over half of
the vote, other candidates are progressively excluded, and second
or later preferences distributed until one candidate has more than
half of the total number of votes.

An example of a full count was the by-election for the House of
Representatives electorate of Corangamite in 1918 this was the
first use of this electoral system in Australia (Election Result
3).

Election Result 3:
Corangamite, by-election (House of Representatives)
1918[One to be elected]

To win a House of Representatives seat a candidate needs to gain
one vote more than 50 per cent of the vote which can be
just first preference votes, or a combination of first preferences
and preferences gained from other candidates. Therein lies a major
difficulty for the minor parties that is a consequence of the use
of Preferential Voting for lower house elections.

Preferential Voting whether full or Optional gives a
disproportionate advantage to the major parties, primarily because
of the size of the vote needed to challenge for a seat. A major
factor in this has been the ongoing electoral strength of the
Coalition parties and the ALP. Occasionally, a prominent minor
party candidate may appear to have a chance of winning a seat, but
invariably such candidates fail. Former Australian Democrats Senate
leader, Janine Haines, was thought to have a good chance of winning
Kingston (SA) in 1990. Haines did remarkably well to gain 26.4 per
cent of first preferences, but was still excluded on the
second-last count. In the 1998 election Pauline Hanson MP, of
Pauline Hanson s One Nation, gained 36 per cent of first
preferences in Blair (Qld), but still fell short of victory due to
no candidate giving her their second preferences. If such
well-known candidates fail, lesser-known candidates are unlikely to
succeed.

To be a factor in a House of Representatives contest, a minor
party needs to be in the final count, but this is very hard to
achieve because minor party candidates have difficulty in gaining
even one-quarter of first preferences. In its heyday the highest
Democratic Labor Party individual vote was only 30.7 per cent
(Scullin 1955), whereas the Australian Democrats managed only two
general election votes in excess of 20 per cent (Kingston, Mayo
1990). The best Green effort to date has been the 23 per cent in
the 2002 Cunningham by-election, a result aided by the Liberal
Party not nominating a candidate. In a general election the best
Australian Greens result has been 21.6 per cent (Sydney 2004). By
contrast, even in the worst post-war effort by the major parties
(1998), between them they still managed to secure 79.8 per cent of
all first preferences, a figure which did not leave much electoral
space for minor parties or independents.

The major parties have thus won 99.4 per cent of all House of
Representatives contests held in the 23 Commonwealth elections
since 1949. No seat has been won by a minor party candidate,
despite three reasonably strong minor parties the Democratic Labor
Party, the Australian Democrats and the Australian Greens
contesting elections. The exceptions have been the occasional
popular local independent, such as Peter Andren, MP for Calare from
1996 until 2007. Candidates such as Andren can succeed if the major
party vote is modest and if they gain the lion s share of second
preferences from other candidates. In fact, in Andren s first
victory (1996) he won despite gaining only 29.4 per cent of first
preferences, but scooping the pool of second preferences.

A problem with elections conducted in single-member electorates
is that occasionally it is possible for a party to receive a
majority of first preferences across all electorates yet fail to
win government. A party can have many of its votes locked up in
safe seats, while its main opponent(s) may have votes spread much
more evenly across the electoral map. In 1990 the Labor Government,
with only 39.4 per cent of first preferences, retained government
despite its vote being 3.8 per cent behind the Coalition parties
combined vote. Eight years later the story was reversed, with Labor
s vote margin over the Coalition of almost one per cent being
insufficient to propel it into government.

It might be supposed that a 50 per cent national vote won by a
party should return it about half of the parliamentary seats being
contested. In fact, majority systems used in single-member
electorates are likely to award a disproportionate number of
parliamentary seats to the largest vote-winner the so-called winner
s bonus . In 1996, for example, the Coalition gained two-thirds of
the seats, yet its first preference vote was less than 50 per cent.
House of Representatives contests quite often illustrate this
phenomenon, as can be seen in Table 1.

In the early years after Federation, when First Past the Post
was being used, Labor candidates were sometimes helped to victory
by a split non-Labor vote. A by-election for the Commonwealth
electorate of Swan in 1918, where a Labor candidate (34.4 per cent)
defeated candidates from the Country (31.4 per cent) and
Nationalist parties (29.6 per cent), galvanised non-Labor forces in
the national parliament. Preferential Voting was introduced for
House of Representatives elections in time for a by-election seven
weeks after the Swan contest.[7] In addition, the legislation
included a requirement to fill every square on a ballot paper (
full Preferential Voting). This was introduced quite deliberately
because it would force voters to allocate second preferences. The
anti-Labor forces believed that Nationalist voters were highly
likely to give second preferences to the new farmers parties and
vice versa. The chances of blocking Labor candidates would thus be
greater than if voters were permitted to give as few (or as many)
preferences as they chose. This expectation was immediately
realised in the Corangamite by-election as we have seen (see pp. 8
9).

In recent years, conservative party three-cornered contests have
fallen into disfavour, and are often a sign of the Liberals and
Nationals failing to agree on which party should contest a
particular electorate. There is no doubt, though, that such
contests can occasionally push a seat away from a Labor to either a
Liberal or National (Country) candidate, as in the three-cornered
contest in Riverina (NSW) in 1980. In this contest the ALP first
preference vote of 46.9 per cent was insufficiently high to counter
the combined National Country Party (NCP) and Liberal vote of 50
per cent, which produced a 93.1 per cent flow of preferences from
the Liberal to the NCP candidate, Noel Hicks. These preferences
pushed Hicks over the line (Election Result 4).

Election Result 4:
Riverina (House of Representatives) 1980[One to be elected]

Three-cornered contests are traditionally associated with the
two major non-Labor parties. In the 1998 election the importance of
Pauline Hanson s One Nation Party in helping some Coalition
candidates win their seats shows that the effect can be seen in
other pairings from time to time. ALP and Green votes have also
worked in this way as in the electorate of Melbourne Ports in 2004,
when the Labor vote (39.3 per cent) and Green vote (14.1 per cent)
together pushed Labor s Michael Danby ahead of the Liberal
candidate who had led on first preferences (42.9 per cent).

Political parties seek to exert as much control as they can over
voters in Australia the how-to-vote card is symptomatic of this.
The negotiation for, and argument over, preferences prior to
polling day is a recognition of the importance parties place in
attempting to control the voters behaviour. For example, the
possibility of a successful three-cornered contest is strengthened
not only by the requirement to fill out every square on the ballot
paper, but also by the preparedness of many voters to follow their
chosen party s how-to-vote cards. The aim of the Democratic Labor
Party (DLP) in the 1950s and 1960s of keeping the ALP from office
was dependent not only on the splinter party gaining a reasonably
healthy vote, but also on their voters being prepared to follow
their cards which invariably put Labor behind the
Coalition.[8]In the example of the
three-cornered contest given above, the National candidate turned
the election around on the final count, when he gained 92.8 per
cent of the preferences in the Liberal candidate s pile of 11 307
ballot papers.

For many years the Labor Party thus was disadvantaged by the
requirement that voters give a full set of preferences in House of
Representatives and various state elections. This was particularly
so during the 1950s and 1960s when Labor was hurt by the impact of
DLP preferences. The ALP s response came in two stages. For some
time the party s platform called for the reinstatement of the First
Past the Post system that had been used for House of
Representatives elections from 1901 until 1918 and in Queensland
Legislative Assembly elections as late as 1961. However, this was a
legislative change that Labor never introduced. The party later
shifted its stance to accept the continuation of full Preferential
Voting, but pushed for voters to be allowed to allocate as many (or
as few) preferences as they liked what is generally called Optional
Preferential Voting. A limited form of Optional Preferential Voting
had been used for Tasmanian Legislative Council elections since
1907, and Labor governments introduced an unlimited model of
Optional Preferential Voting for elections for the New South Wales
(1979) and Queensland (1992) Legislative Assemblies the model that
is discussed in this paper.

In a Tasmanian Legislative Council limited Optional Preferential
Voting election:

if there are 2 or 3 candidates on the ballot paper, preferences
must be given to each candidate

but where there are more than 3 candidates, the voter is free
to vote for as many of the remaining candidates as she or he
chooses.

By contrast, when voting in a New South Wales or Queensland
Legislative Assembly unlimited Optional Preferential Voting
election (Ballot paper 2) an elector may:

vote for just for one candidate, leaving all other squares
blank sometimes called plumping

give preferences to some, but not all, candidates or

give preferences to all candidates, as in full preferential
voting.

Ballot Paper
2

The procedure for the distribution of preferences in either
unlimited or limited Optional Preferential Voting elections is
identical to that used for full Preferential Voting. However, when
a particular ballot paper has no more preferences to distribute
that paper is declared exhausted , and is removed from the count.
In the electorate of Barron River in the 1998 Queensland
election, 1901 votes eventually were declared exhausted (Election
Result 5).

Election Result 5: Barron River (Queensland, Legislative
Assembly) 1998[One to be elected]

Unlike full Preferential Voting where the winning candidate will
eventually achieve an absolute majority of votes, under Optional
Preferential Voting it is possible for a winning candidate to
receive fewer than half of the votes left in the count. This is
because some votes are exhausted , with no more preferences to
distribute, and are removed from the count. In the example of
Barron River given here (Election Result 5), although the winner
(Clark) had gained over half of the votes remaining in the count
when counting finished (50.6 per cent), she actually had fewer than
half of the original total of formal votes, having received 9287 of
the total number of 20 245 first preferences (45.9 per cent). It
can be argued that Optional Preferential Voting reduces the
importance of the majority that is evident in full Preferential
Voting.

In the Queensland elections of 2004 and 2007 the Labor Party
asked its supporters to Just vote 1. In other words, Labor
voters were asked to give the party their first preference, with no
preferences given to any other candidate. In seeking to take
advantage of the optional aspect of preference allocation in this
way, Labor sought to minimise the impact of an exchange of
preferences that might hurt the Beattie Government. As well as
attempting to persuade its own voters to act in this way, it hoped
that many One Nation voters would allocate just a single
preference, because their second preferences were far more likely
to be given to a Coalition than to a Labor candidate. The Coalition
parties claimed that Labor s tactic undermined the principle of
voters being able to express preferences, but it seemed that many
voters were happy to accept the party s instruction.

Proportional Representation systems were devised to produce
proportional election results parties should win parliamentary
seats roughly in proportion to the size of their vote. Ideally, 50
per cent of the vote should win about 50 per cent of the seats.
Proportional Representation is not a single method of election, for
there are a number of variations in use, including the Single
Transferable Vote, two variants of which are used in Australia. One
is used in Senate elections, and the Hare-Clark version, referred
to earlier, is used for elections to the Tasmanian House of
Assembly and the ACT Legislative Assembly. The discussion below
deals with each, illustrated by the 2004 Australian Senate election
in Victoria (Election Result 6), and the 2006 Tasmanian House of
Assembly election in the electorate of Denison (Election Result 7).
The counting procedure for Proportional Representation is very
complex only an outline is given here. For a fuller description,
see the paper written by Greg Gardiner of the Victorian
Parliamentary Library.[9]

Each state and territory acts as a single, multi-member
electorate in Senate elections. In half-Senate elections six
senators are elected from each state, and two from each territory.
In full Senate elections, which follow a dissolution of both houses
of the Parliament, 12 senators are elected from each state and two
from each territory.

A heavy horizontal line runs across the ballot paper (Ballot
Paper 3). Above that line is a single row of boxes, each above the
name (if given) of a party or group, though not for the list of
Ungrouped candidates. The position on the ballot paper of each
party or group list is determined by lot.

Below the line parties and groups list their candidates in
separate vertical lists, headed by the party or group name though
here also a name is not required. Independent candidates are placed
in an Ungrouped list on the extreme right of the paper.

If an elector chooses to vote above the line, the number 1 must
be placed in one of the boxes all other boxes above the line must
remain blank. Parties may submit a preferred order of voting (a
Group Voting Ticket) to the Australian Electoral Commission which
is displayed at all polling places. An above the line vote is dealt
with by polling officials as if the voter had voted in the order of
names on a Group Voting Ticket(s) issued by the party of their
choice.[10]During the count, preferences are
allocated according to the order of names expressed by the party on
a Group Voting Ticket.

The elector can choose to vote below the horizontal line. If
that option is taken the voter must fill out every square, with
numbers running from 1 to the number equal to the total number of
candidates on the ballot paper. Electors choosing to vote for an
ungrouped candidate can vote only below the line.

Fifty-seven candidates in a total of 19 groups and eight
ungrouped candidates were on the Victorian 2004 Senate election
ballot paper. A total of 2 996 594 votes were cast. The party votes
were as follows:

Senate candidates must secure a certain number of votes to be
elected a quota. To calculate the quota for a particular election,
the total number of formal votes cast is divided by the number of
candidates to be elected plus 1, and 1 is added to the result.

In our Victorian example 2 996 594 formal ballot
papers were cast, from which six senators were to be elected:

Total formal votes

Candidates to be elected + 1

2 996 594 = 428
084

(6 + 1)

One is added to the
result

428 084 + 1

The result is the quota (the number
of votes each candidate needs to secure to be elected)

428 085

In this example, where six Senators were to be elected, the
quota of 428 085 votes could be achieved by six candidates
only.

The percentage of the vote needed to win a Senate seat varies
according to the number of senators to be elected (Table 2).

After the counting of first preference votes, any candidate who
has achieved a quota is declared elected. In elections for state
senators the first candidates on each of the Liberal/Coalition and
the Labor lists are invariably declared elected after this first
count these candidates are then removed from the count. In the
Victoria 2004 example, Michael Ronaldson (Lib) and Kim Carr (ALP)
both exceeded the quota after the count of first preferences and
were declared elected (Election Result 6, Count 1).

Elected candidates who gain more votes than the quota are said
to have a surplus number of votes. The surplus of each successful
candidate s votes is transferred, according to the second
preferences shown on the ballot papers, to continuing candidates.
In the Victoria 2004 example, Ronaldson gained 1 381 539 votes. His
surplus was the total of his first preferences minus the quota: 1
318 539 428 085 = 890 454 surplus votes

Which of Ronaldson s votes were transferred? Because it is
impossible to specify which votes actually elected Ronaldson, and
which were surplus to that outcome, some distribution method is
needed. Senate electoral arrangements originally had a random
transfer of surplus votes. In the 2004 Victoria example, a random
sample of 890 454 of the 1 318 539 ballot papers would have been
made. However, it was eventually realised that a potential problem
was the fact that in a close election different random selections
could produce different results. It has been claimed that the
election of Neville Bonner (Lib) as a Queensland senator ahead of
Mal Colston (ALP) in 1974 was the result of random sampling, which
might have produced a Colston success had a different sample been
selected.[12]

A simpler, fairer and uncontroversial method is to look at the
second preferences of all of Ronaldson s 1 318 539 papers, count
the number of second preferences given to each candidate, and give
the candidates 890 454 / 1 318 539 of the second preference votes
allocated to each. The fraction enables those counting the vote to
ascertain what is called the transfer value :

transfer value

=

candidate’s surplus votes

candidate’s first preference votes

The result is taken to the eighth decimal point, without
rounding.

The transfer value of Ronaldson s preferences therefore was
established by dividing his surplus by the total of his first
preferences:

890 454
1 318 539 = 0.67533383

In the Victorian contest, therefore, 890 454 surplus Ronaldson
votes were distributed by a series of such calculations. Because so
many voters followed the Coalition Group Voting Ticket the second
candidate on the ticket, Julian McGauran, secured 889 465
surplus votes and the remaining Coalition candidates shared another
748. In addition, 22 surplus votes went to Labor candidates, 40 to
the Greens, 43 to the Family First Party and 114 were scattered
among the other candidates. There were also some votes omitted from
the count through exhaustion [13]or loss by fraction
.[14]In gaining most of Ronaldson s
surplus, McGauran was pushed above the quota and was declared
elected (Election Result 6, Count 2).

Note that when each successful candidate was elected with
surplus votes, a new transfer value was established and used to
calculate to which candidates the relevant surplus votes were to be
transferred.

The process of transferring surplus votes from successful
candidates proceeds either until all positions are filled at which
point the counting ceases or until there are no more surplus votes
to distribute. In a typical Senate election for state senators the
combination of first preference plus surplus votes is very likely
to see the election of five senators quite early in the count. As
we have seen, in the 2004 Victoria example three Coalition senators
(Ronaldson, McGauran, Troeth) and two ALP senators (Carr, Conroy)
had been elected by the end of the fourth count.

When no more surplus votes remain to be distributed, but a seat
(or seats) remains to be filled, the process takes on the
appearance of a preferential voting distribution. Candidates with
the fewest votes are gradually excluded from the count, and their
preferences are distributed to remaining candidates, either until
another candidate is elected with surplus votes then needing to be
distributed or the final candidate is elected. If the latter, the
counting is concluded.

The preferences of excluded candidates are transferred at full
value, unlike surplus transfers. As most of the excluded candidates
will have very small total votes, many counts may be necessary
before the process ends. In Victoria 2004 it was only on the
285th count that the final ALP candidate, Jacinta
Collins, was excluded, and 230 995 of her
240 992 votes went to Steve Fielding (Family First) who was elected
as the sixth Victorian senator. Of the 59 candidates who failed to
gain election, only David Risstrom (Green) remained in the
count.

In the 2004 Senate election, 95.9 per cent of all Australian
voters cast an above-the-line vote and, hence, relied on a party
Group Voting Ticket for the ordering of their preferences. In our
example of Victoria 2004, 97.7 per cent voted above the line. With
28.6 per cent guaranteeing two seats for a party, the top two
candidates in each of a Coalition and an ALP ticket are certain of
election. As each party s order of candidates names remains fixed,
there is therefore no chance of either of these four candidates
failing to be elected.

To win a Senate seat in a half-Senate election for state
senators requires far fewer votes than in Preferential Voting
elections 14.7 per cent of the vote, rather than 50 per cent (plus
one vote). This is of great significance to the stronger minor
parties. Since the first use of Proportional Representation in the
1949 Senate election, 77 of 937 Senate contests (8.2 per cent) have
been won by non-major party candidates during the Howard years
(1996 2004) the figure has been 21 of 160 contests, or 13.1 per
cent. Not surprisingly, this has ensured that a greater range of
views has been heard in the upper house than in the lower. Since
the election of the Australian Labor Party (Anti-Communist)
Senator, Frank McManus, in 1955 the minor party and independent
senators have included the anti-death duties campaigner Syd Negus
(WA, 1971 74), the long-term Tasmanian independent, Brian Harradine
(Tas, 1975 2005), the Australian Democrat founder, Don Chipp (Vic,
1978 86), Robert Wood of the Nuclear Disarmament Party (NSW, 1987
8) and One Nation s Len Harris (Qld, 1999 2005.

The way in which Proportional Representation makes a
parliamentary chamber more of a mirror of voters preferences can be
seen in four elections held between 1949 and 1996 that gave large
House of Representatives majorities to the winning party/ies 1949,
1975, 1983, 1996. In each year the Senate result was far more
proportional to voter support than was the House of Representatives
result (Table 3). This can be seen particularly clearly in 1975,
when the Gough Whitlam-led ALP secured more than 40 per cent of the
vote, winning 42.2 per cent of Senate seats, but only 28.3 per cent
of seats in the House of Representatives.

The most obvious consequence of minor party electoral success
has been the difficulty for the major parties in gaining control of
the Senate. Since 1949, the government of the day has controlled
the Senate only during the years 1951 56, 1959 62, 1975 81 and
since July 2005. When a government does not control the Senate, it
soon realises that in such a scenario the Australian Senate joins
the US Senate as one of the most powerful of the world s upper
houses. When a government does control the Senate, however,
observers are reminded that the Senate power is a matter of
potential rather than reality.[15]

The Hare-Clark method is used for House of Assembly elections in
Tasmania and for the ACT Legislative Assembly. We have seen that it
has been used in Tasmania since the election of 1909, giving it the
longest continuous history of any parliamentary electoral system
used in Australia.

The Hare-Clark ballot paper does not have the horizontal line
seen on the Senate ballot paper (Ballot papers 4a, 4b). Party
candidates are placed in separate vertical groups, with ungrouped
candidates included in a column to the right of the party
groups.

A 1979 addition to the Tasmanian arrangements provided for the
position of the names within each group to be altered by provisions
of so-called Robson rotation in which the names in each group are
re-ordered from paper to paper, so as to reduce the impact of any
advantageous ballot positions. Two examples from the 2004 election
are shown, illustrating the shift of candidates names on the ballot
paper.[16]

In Tasmania a voter must mark preferences against at least five
candidates, but may vote for more than five. Tasmanian electoral
law forbids anyone from canvassing for votes, soliciting the vote
of an elector, or attempting to induce an elector not to vote for a
particular candidate or particular candidates within 100 metres of
a polling place.[17]The consequence is that
how-to-vote cards are nowhere to be seen on polling day for the
Tasmanian House of Assembly.

The counting of Hare-Clark elections is similar to the Senate
(Election Result 7). With party tickets not applying, the process
of electing MPs under Hare-Clark is far less predictable than in
Senate elections.

It sometimes happens that the vote is spread so evenly that no
candidate is elected on the first count (e.g. Bass, Lyons 1998). In
Denison 2006, however, Peg Putt (Grn) was elected on first
preferences (Election Result 7, Count 1), though her surplus votes
were insufficient to help any other candidate over the line
(Election Result 7, Count 2).

In fact, it took 23 more counts before the Liberals Michael
Hodgman achieved a quota to be the second elected (Election Result
7, Count 25). Hodgman s surplus distribution, plus more exclusions,
saw the first Labor success with the election of David Bartlett
(Election Result 7, Count 33). The count soon came to an end due to
a combination of candidate exclusion and surplus redistribution,
which saw Labor s Lisa Singh (Election Result 7, Count 35) and
Graeme Sturges (Election Result 7, Count 39) being pushed over the
line. Fabian Dixon (Lib) was the only candidate still in the
count.

Election Result 7: Denison (House of Assembly)
2006[Five to be
elected]

Minority governments are much more common in Tasmania and the
ACT than in jurisdictions where Preferential Voting is used. Seven
Tasmanian governments since 1948 have lacked control of the House
of Assembly, and the first four ACT elections after the achievement
of self-government (1989) saw the return of minority
governments.

With Hare-Clark ballot papers lacking the above-the-line
provision of Senate elections, combined with an absence of
how-to-vote cards and the rotation of party names, Hare-Clark
voters are much freer to vote as they choose. The freedom that
voters have can make Hare-Clark elections quite unpredictable at
times. The count in the electorate of Bass in 1998, referred to
above, was a case in point. There were 479 counts before the first
MP gained election, and it took a total of 820 counts to see all
five MPs confirmed.

Party candidates are more vulnerable than in Senate elections,
where we have seen how the combination of fixed-order party lists
and above-the-line voting gives protection to particular
candidates. In Tasmanian and ACT elections, however, parties may
not rank their party lists and, hence, voters have much freedom to
target a non-performing MP, even though they may continue to vote
for that MP s party: the system provides no blue riband [sic] seats
for complacent or tired party members .[19]In the 1979
Tasmanian election where the Labor government was returned with
54.3 per cent of the vote, and where the Premier s vote was a
record-breaking 51.2 per cent, an under-performing Minister lost
his seat, against all expectations.[20]

The relative lack of safety for candidates is emphasised by the
fact that individual candidates are fighting for votes not only
from their party opponents, but also from members of their own
party ticket. In fact some candidates will attempt to become
associated with one part of their electorate, while others will
work at canvassing the whole electorate, irrespective of whether
they are trespassing on the preserve of their colleagues. Some
long-standing candidates can make it difficult for colleagues to
develop a presence in the electorate. In the Denison contest given
here (Election Result 7), the prominence of Peg Putt (Grn) and
Michael Hodgman (Lib) made it difficult for their party colleagues
to gain a competitive number of votes. The votes of Labor s trio of
David Bartlett, Lisa Singh and Graeme Sturges were much more evenly
spread than the votes for Liberal or Green candidates, and were
sufficiently high for Labor to elect the third, fourth and final
members for the seat.

From time to time critics call for the removal of one of the
four systems described here. For example, the ALP has long had
doubts about Preferential Voting. In the 2006 Queensland state
election Labor s Gladstone candidate was bemused that he lost to
the sitting member, despite leading her on first preferences,
claiming that use of such a system makes it hard for the electorate
to understand why she retains her seat when primary votes clearly
show [that] I won. [21]The Queensland Nationals policy is
for electoral systems to be consistent between state and
Commonwealth jurisdictions, effectively a call for full
Preferential Voting to replace the Optional Preferential Voting
used in Queensland state elections.[22]Senator Andrew
Bartlett of the Australian Democrats has called for the replacement
of Preferential Voting for House of Representatives elections with
a version of the Mixed Member Proportional system used in Germany
and New Zealand.[23]As the Greens became a force in
Tasmania, calls were heard from various critics, including the
Liberal Party, for the abolition of the Hare-Clark model of
Proportional Representation.[24]The journalist, David
Barnett, has damned both Preferential Voting and Proportional
Representation, claiming that both have long since ceased to
deliver effective governments in Australia and therefore should be
scrapped. [25]

However, despite such doubts being held, the four systems we
have discussed appear to be widely accepted, and are not targets
for widespread community frustration. When the Commonwealth
Parliament s Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters conducts
enquiries after each Commonwealth election, there is generally
little interest expressed in removing the actual electoral systems,
though refinements of them are often suggested. When a significant
change actually is made to Australian electoral arrangements, as in
Victoria s move to the Senate model of Proportional Representation
for its 2006 Legislative Council elections, essentially the
lawmakers produce local variations on one of the four electoral
systems described in this paper.

It seems, therefore, that Australia has found electoral
arrangements that suit the needs of its people, its parties and its
parliamentarians.

This was the electoral system first used in all Australian
colonies. It was also used for House of Representatives elections
from Federation until 1918. Each voter had a single vote, and the
candidate with the highest number of votes won the seat,
irrespective of the percentage of the votes.

This system was used for Senate elections between 1902 and 1919
and was essentially First Past the Post as adapted for multi-member
electorates. The elector had as many votes as there were seats to
be filled. As with First Past the Post the candidates with the
highest votes were elected, irrespective of the percentage of the
votes. There was a tendency for all of a state s seats to be won by
the same party, which was the major factor causing the Commonwealth
Parliament to eventually abandon the system.

This system is used to elect the Norfolk Island Legislative
Assembly. Voters have the same number of votes as there are
positions to fill Norfolk Island voters have nine votes to elect
the nine-person legislature. A voter may give one vote to each of
nine candidates. On the other hand, the voter may give more than
one vote to different candidates, though no more than two votes may
be given to any one candidate. The nine candidates with the highest
votes are elected, irrespective of percentage.

This system was used between 1892 and 1942 to elect Queensland
Legislative Assembly MPs. Voters were required to rank candidates
in order of preference. If no candidate received an absolute
majority of first preference votes, then all but the two leading
candidates were eliminated from the count, and the preferences of
the eliminated candidates were distributed among the two remaining
candidates.

This system was used for New South Wales Legislative Assembly
elections from 1910 to 1918. What was essentially a First Past the
Post election was conducted, with a candidate who received more
than half the vote being declared elected. If no candidate received
an absolute majority, a second ballot was held seven days after the
poll (14 21 days in rural electorates) between the two candidates
who received the highest votes. This system is used in East Timor
presidential elections.

Shortly after Preferential Voting was introduced for House of
Representatives elections, it was introduced in 1919 for Senate
elections. Candidates were placed vertically on the ballot paper,
with voters able to vote for any candidate. The first Senate
position was filled after a normal Preferential Voting count. With
the successful candidate removed from the count, the same votes
were reused for a second Preferential Voting count to fill the
second position, and, after the second successful candidate was
removed from the count, used for a third Preferential Voting count
to fill the final seat. As with the Block Vote, one party tended to
win all seats being contested. This system was last used for the
Senate election of 1946.

This first Australian version of Proportional Representation was
limited to the two multi-member Tasmanian House of Assembly
electorates of Hobart (6 members) and Launceston (4 Members).
Introduced on a trial basis for the election of 1897, the system
was used in the 1900 election as well. Candidates stood as
individuals rather than in groups. Electors had to give preferences
to at least half the number to be elected. The quota of votes
needed for election was ascertained by dividing the formal vote by
the number of seats to be filled the so-called Hare Quota .

Party List systems are used extensively in Europe, and such a
system was used for South Australian Legislative Council elections
between 1973 and 1981. Although candidates names were presented in
separate group lists, voters could register a vote only for a
party, rather than for an individual candidate.

In 1989 and 1992 the Australian Capital Territory comprised one
electorate for the first elections held after self-government had
been achieved. The voting method which was known as the modified d
Hondt system was a unique combination of aspects of the d Hondt
system (a European party list system of Proportional
Representation), of the voting method used for the Senate, and of
Preferential Voting. After much controversy, confusion among
voters, and a failure to produce majority governments, the system
was replaced by the Hare-Clark system for the 1995 election.

[13]. Filling every square on ballot papers can cause
confusion for some voters with consequential errors in their
numbering of votes. As an official attempt to lessen the impact of
this, voters are permitted three such errors before their ballot
paper is deemed to be informal. Such papers are exhausted and put
aside, but are included in the official figures.

[14]. Application of a transfer value will cause the loss of
fractions of votes, the tally of which is also incuded in the
official figures.

[15]. Government , in Year Book Australia 2007,
Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberra, 2007, p. 71.

[16]. Robson rotation is named after Neil Robson, the MP who
devised the method for rotating candidates names.

[23]. Andrew Bartlett, A squeeze on the balance of power:
using Senate reform to dilute democracy , in Marian Sawer and Sarah
Miskin (eds), Representation and Institutional Change: 50 years
of Proportional Representation in the Senate, Australian
National University and the Department of the Senate, Canberra,
1999, pp. 116 17.